Japanese Victims Association against Religious Kidnapping and Forced Conversion

News

2012年10月15日

Unificationists and Friends Challenge Faith Breaking in Japan at Pace University

Two young Unificationists
attending Pace University in Pleasantville, NY, worked in tangent with the
other campus organizations to organize an event titled “Religious Freedom Now”
on March 20, 2012. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness about faith
breaking of Unification Church members in Japan.

Efforts into networking, handing
out flyers and posting announcements around the university resulted in a crowd
of about 50 people at the event.

From left to right: Harrison C.
Davies, President of Residence Hall Association and Unificationist Pace
students Hatsue Masuyama and Kimisei Miyake.

Hatsue Masuyama (21), a
third-year Education major and a second-generation Unificationist, is the
Secretary of the Residence Hall Association at Pace. S­­­­­­­­­­­­­­he attended
a religious freedom event at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in November
and felt inspired to hold a similar event at her own school. She and fellow
Unificationist Kimisei Miyake (21), a first-year student and Vice President of
the Freshman Honors Society, worked together with the Residence Hall
Association, as well as the Future Educators Association to put on the event

“Hatsue and I did numerous
things to publicize the event,” said Miyake. “She networked with organizations
and we also printed out flyers for the event. We posted a flyer on the door of
every dorm room on campus, and we printed an announcement on Flush
Flash, a paper that gets posted in bathroom stalls that lists all the
upcoming events.”

Their efforts to publicize paid
off. About 50 people attended the event, including more than 25 students.

Remarks from Victoria Roomet

At the event, Victoria Roomet,
president of Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP),
introduced the issue of faith breaking in Japan and its significance in the
United States. She said the following:

“CARP is the collegiate wing of
the Unification Church. Like a lot of new religions and religious minorities,
we Unificationists tend to face some level of religious discrimination, just
because we are not understood. While I was on campus as a college student, I
faced a degree of discrimination when I was getting my CARP chapter established
as a club at Brandeis University. I was really surprised by this, because I
thought most people didn’t know what the Unification Church was. Apparently
some people did, and had read some negative things online, which they just
threw at me. It turned into a pretty big production. Typically, getting a club
approved would take ten minutes, but my meeting took two hours because these
people just kept saying negative things about us.

“But the good thing about the
conclusion of this meeting was that the Student Union saw that people were
being overly discriminatory and during the meeting, and they passed us notes
saying, ‘This is religious intolerance, this is unacceptable, you should sue
these guys for the things they’re saying!’ So the club was recognized and
everything was fine.

“Because we have a just system
in American universities, if the club hadn’t been recognized, it would have
been really easy for me to walk over to the administrator’s office and say,
‘Hey! Some religious intolerance just took place. We need to do something about
it,’ and it would have been addressed. That’s what is expected here in American
society these days, which is awesome. We have freedom of speech and freedom of
religion. Let’s hear if for that! America!

Religious Intolerance in
Japanese Universities

“Unfortunately, there are other
countries in the world where this does not exist, even though they claim to
practice the same principles as America. For example, Japan is a modern-day
democracy, and they pretend to uphold religious freedom. However, they are very
intolerant of religious minorities, particularly towards the Unification
Church.

“So put yourself in these
Japanese college students’ shoes. This is what Unificationist students face
every day. One thing Japanese universities are doing is putting out cautions
issued by professors during enrollment, orientations, anti-cult seminars and
regular classes. Even in classes, professors are openly bashing these
organizations.

“There are also various forms of
academic harassment and intimidations towards CARP members, including constant
surveillance, interrogation, coercion to leave the church or speak against it
and even rejection of grad-school exams. Many of these students are denied
entrance into grad schools or classes because the professors find out that they
are a part of the Unification Church.

“Worst of all is the
encouragement of coordination between the students’ parents and ‘rescuer’
ministers who kidnap students and subject them to forced confinement with the
purpose of de-conversion. Since 2006, there have been about 40 confirmed cases
on college campuses of college students being kidnapped and then forced to
revoke their faith.

“At least in America, if
somebody was trying to kidnap me on campus, I’d be able to turn to the
administration. They’re my friends, they’re looking out for me. It’s their job
to support me as a student. But in Japan, the administrators are working
together with the deprogrammers to kidnap students. It’s a very backwards
system that they have on campus. And nobody is doing anything about it; the issue
is pushed aside every time because it is considered a ‘family matter.’ It’s
legal in their eyes.

“I was recently able to travel
to Korea for work, and I met with several students who are facing this kind of
discrimination on campus. They were incredible people. But it was so
heartbreaking for me because of the way they were looking at me. Their faces
were telling me, ‘you’re my only hope.’ I mean, if I had that kind of situation
in America, I could vocalize it, and people would listen to me. But in Japan,
they have no voice. Nobody is listening to them.

“So, I kind of feel a sense of
responsibility. Because we’re so lucky to be living in this democracy where
these rights are upheld, we almost have an obligation to help those who don’t
have a voice.”

Testimonies from Survivors of
Faith Breaking

Luke Higuchi, President of
Survivors against Forced Exit, offered a testimony about his own kidnapping
experience and showed a short documentary entitled “Japan’s Hidden Shame.” The
film featured personal testimonies from victims of faith breakers and offered
facts about the discrimination of Japanese Unificationists.

Gail Veith, a survivor of faith
breaking in the United States, also gave a testimony about her traumatic
experience at the hands of ‘deprogrammers’ and how her relationship with her
father was destroyed through that experience.

“The strongest force in the
universe is the parent-child relationship,” she said. “If a parent believes
that their child is being misled and abused, they will do anything they can and
spend any money to save that child. But faith breakers take advantage of that.

“My dad took me to a mental
hospital, and ironically, that was my saving grace. They interviewed me in one
room and my dad in another room, and then they brought us together and told my
father, ‘Mr. Greenwich, your daughter is perfectly normal. She’s over eighteen,
and in America, we have religious freedom. She can choose any faith she wants.’
I always loved America, I’m very patriotic, but at that moment, I thought,
‘thank God for America!’

“It’s hard to describe in words
how I felt. But imagine if your dad took you and sold you into slavery. Imagine
how that would feel. Your own father took you and delivered you into the arms
of the enemy, how would you feel? We’re still trying to mend the scars, even
today.

“I have a very happy family, a
wonderful husband and four children, but I cannot deny the fact that families
in Japan cannot enjoy the same luxury we have here in America. We have to
really think about them, and how we can help them.”

Dan Fefferman, President of
International Coalition of Religious Freedom, then gave a presentation
entitled, “Forced Conversion in Japan: a Hidden Human Rights Crime” in which he
offered more detailed facts and figures about the mistreatment of
Unificationists in Japan.